International Masters For Health Leadership

Ferring Canada, a subsidiary of Ferring Pharmaceuticals, has contributed a $2-million dollar donation to the Faculties of Management and Medicine at McGill University, which will create new fellowships for graduate students working in the domains of health sciences and health management and leadership.

It is alarming, but obesity has reached epidemic proportions in Kuwait. Oil has not only brought great wealth to the Gulf, but a huge change in lifestyle and food habits. Fast food, fast cars and everything else that money can buy has led to the rise of obesity so much so that today at least 88 percent of Kuwaitis are considered overweight.

Joanne Liu is president of Médecins Sans Frontières, an international medical humanitarian organisation that has 30,000 medical professionals delivering emergency aid in more than 60 countries. She trained at McGill University School of Medicine and has a fellowship in paediatric emergency medecine from New York University School of Medicine.

As the NHS faces a perceived crisis of management, and clinicians are forced to shoulder more non-clinical responsibilities, postgraduate degrees in business and management are becoming increasingly sought after in the healthcare sector.... “Subjects like marketing and finance may be important, but the mindsets of business and healthcare are quite different,” says Prof Henry Mintzberg, co-founding director of the International Masters for Health Leadership at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Canada.

"I've never managed to get used to seeing people die." - Dr. Bernard Rieux, from The Plague by Albert Camus (and one of Joanne Liu's favourite books)

She has treated people near death from a cholera epidemic in Haiti. She was quick to respond to injured tsunami survivors in Indonesia in 2004. She braved war conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan's Darfur region.

So we’re all going to have mHealth, it seems. A major March 2012 report by consultancy PwC and representatives of the global mobile operator industry predicted the worldwide mhealth market is expected to reach $23 billion (EUR 18 billion approximately) by 2017, with Europe the biggest sector ahead of Asia Pacific. Meanwhile, one supplier estimated to us that there are at least 12,000 ‘health’ mobile apps on the Apple iTunes store already.

The demands in today’s healthcare environment require those clinically prepared to have managerial and leadership skills that are not learned in traditional training. The delivery of healthcare services is ever more complex, interactive and team-oriented. A thorough understanding of the whole field and all aspects of delivery are critical to contain costs and errors as well as to improve patient outcomes.

A group of students from Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal recently won a $100,000 grant from Grand Challenges Canada to field test an ingenious and low-cost water purification device that could potentially save millions of lives in developing countries.